She types 9-1- into her phone and then lets her finger hover over the 1, waiting.
Finally, after he lets Mom go, Dad goes to his man cave, but Ella doesn’t move. Her mother just stands there for a moment, then doubles over and shakes for a while, then slowly comes back to life like she’s been frozen in ice. Her shoulders hunch up, her hands make fists, and she fixes her hair, tucking the blond strands back behind her ears. Muttering softly to herself, she cleans up the kitchen, quietly, swiftly. Once the dishwasher is running and everything smells like lemons, Mom opens her laptop, and her eyes glaze over. She calls this “doing work,” but Ella knows how to check browser history, so she knows that her mom is looking at her Dream Vitality numbers and scrolling through the Missed Connections forum of some old website called Craigslist and posting bullshit memes and pics of their great life on social media, which doesn’t seem like work at all. Ella asked her about the Missed Connections once, because she thought her mom might be cheating on her dad. But Mom explained that she was always looking for her high school best friend who basically disappeared.
Ella wouldn’t blame her mom for having an affair, though. She would almost welcome that if it meant her parents would get divorced. Then there would never be another night like this.
From here on out, nothing will happen. It’s safe. Dad will do whatever he does in the man cave until well after midnight. Ella covers a yawn and hurries to her room.
* * *
—
When she wakes up in the morning, her phone is still on the Dialer.
9-1-
One day, she thinks, she’ll have to press that final 1, but for now she just erases everything, almost like it never happened.
Downstairs, Mom stands at the kitchen window, but Ella doesn’t think she’s looking at the pool. She has the lunches made and breakfast ready. The small trash can they use for recycling is empty of beer bottles. Ella wonders if she actually slept at all. Mom is so pretty, and really young compared with plenty of the other moms, but she does look a little tired. Ella watched some YouTube videos about makeup that could help with that, but she doesn’t want to hurt her mom’s feelings—especially after Dad’s bullshit about how she needs to get Botox and go to a spa and look like Uncle Brian’s wife, Marissa, who idolizes the Kardashians.
“Good morning, Smella,” Mom says with an apologetic smile.
“Morning, Momster,” Ella replies, glad that this little ritual they’ve had since she was even younger than Brooklyn is still intact. “Morning, Brookie.”
When she sits at the table, her mother brings over a stack of pancakes for her, the syrup and butter melted in a mug, just the way she likes it. She almost feels guilty, that Mom has to put up with so much and still takes the time to do nice things. She has no idea how to put this into words, so she just says, “Thanks.”
“Mommy, you look sad,” Brooklyn says through a mouthful of pancake, and Ella is glad her sister just put it out there, because she’s still young enough that it’s not quite an insult.
“I had bad dreams,” Mom admits with that Sad Mom Smile.
“I did, too!” Brooklyn almost shouts, as if it were a good thing.
“Me, too,” Ella murmurs, because it’s true.
Mom draws Brooklyn into what must be a very sticky hug and smooths the little baby hairs around her forehead. Ella watches, her face a mask, hating that Mom doesn’t really touch her like that anymore but knowing full well she can’t help flinching away from anything that intimate.
“Everyone has bad dreams sometimes.” Mom’s voice is soft and sweet and low. “Just try to think happy thoughts today.”
“Can we get frozen yogurt on the way home?”
Mom’s sigh suggests that the answer will be no. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. All that sugar is bad for you. You don’t even get yogurt there—just candy toppings.”
“I like the yogurt,” Ella can’t help adding. But of course she doesn’t need Mom to agree; she could just drive there in her car and get yogurt anytime she wanted with her babysitting money.
Mom shakes her head and pulls out of Brooklyn’s hug. “Maybe tomorrow. It’s time to go to school now.”
As they hurry outside, Mom glares up at the sun, frowning, before fumbling in her purse for her big sunglasses. Ella pauses at the door to her car, an older but respectable Honda Civic. She knows she’s lucky to have a car, and she knows that it must’ve sucked for her mom to drive fifteen miles back and forth to her charter school for the year and a half of high school before she turned sixteen, but just now she hates the fact that Brooklyn gets to drive to school with Mom and get all that time with her while Ella has to drive alone.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asks, one hand on the door.
Mom gives her a smile, but not a real one. “Of course, honey. Why wouldn’t I be?”
And although Ella knows exactly why her mom shouldn’t be okay, can’t be okay, the words dry up in her throat and she nods and gets in her car.
That day at lunch, the strangest thing happens.
Two boys get in a fight. But something about it is deeply wrong.
One of them, Jordan Stack, is kind of an asshole and gets in fights all the time, so it’s no surprise that he’s involved. But the other one, Thomas Canton, is a scrawny, dorky kid who can’t even run laps without wheezing. He barely speaks in class and when he does, his voice is a whispery mumble, but now he stands, his chair squealing as he pushes back from the table. Ella looks up at him, wondering what’s gotten into him, and he jumps at Jordan like a lion leaping on a gazelle—no, no, like a trusted chihuahua launching itself at an unsuspecting toddler, so sudden, so feral, so blindly furious—driving the larger boy to the floor between the tables. Now Thomas is on top of Jordan, straddling his chest, slamming the bigger boy’s head into the ground again and again. All the kids gather around them, as keen as sharks smelling blood. The boys start yelling, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” while the girls first command them and then beg them to stop. But they don’t.